Polyamides are used in a wide variety of industrial applications. Particularly important are automotive applications such as flexible tubing and cable jackets. These uses, however, require a flexibility that is not characteristic of the unmodified resin. Accordingly, the required flexibility is generally attained by adding plasticizers to the polyamide resin.
Automotive applications for polyamide resins also require resistance to chloride salts of the type used for de-icing roads or the chloride salts from sea water in coastal areas. Nylon 612 has been found to be particularly resistant to aqueous zinc chloride solution. However, the presence of plasticizers normally used for nylon 612, such as the sulfonamide plasticizers, adversely affects the resistance of the nylon resin to zinc chloride. A need therefore exists for a plasticized nylon resin with improved zinc chloride resistance.